Otis Redding didn't simply "play concerts." The soul giant was a human Mount Vesuvius: He erupted. Redding was at the height of his fame in March 1967, when he played these two brief shows in London and Paris. (He would die in a plane crash in December that year.) And the audience's reaction is ecstatic — it's a fair bet that few of these Europeans had ever witnessed a spectacle quite like Redding and the all-star Stax house band, Booker T. and the MG's and the Mar-Key horns, tearing into "I Can't Turn You Loose." Legendary producer Tom Dowd supervised the recording in London, and the show is a barnburner — six torrid uptempo soul numbers leading into Redding's signature whisper-to-a-scream anthem "Try a Little Tenderness." But the Paris concert highlights the singer's balladeering, adding the stately "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "These Arms of Mine." And there is a bit of cheeky turnabout at work in Redding's trip to the other side of the Atlantic. He delivers two of the most baldfaced homages in pop history — the Beatles' "Day Tripper" and the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" — taking the world's biggest rock stars to school for a torrid Memphis-soul master class.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."